Roulette / multimedia sound installation, Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris (2021)

ROULETTE

2014

According to data released by the South African Police service from 2017/18, a woman is murdered every 3 hours in South Africa.*

In Roulette, a stream of amplified static is punctured once every 3 hours by an ear-ringing recording of a point-blank revolver gunshot. Stepping onto the domestic ‘welcome’ mat, those who risk listening-in open themselves to a more embodied, implicating and potentially harming relation to this statistical abstraction of feminine death.

* Statistic corroborated by Africa Check, an independent non-partisan organisation. When Gabrielle Goliath first exhibited Roulette in 2014, the statistic sat at a woman murdered every 6 hours, according to a National Study of Female Homicide in South Africa (MRC Policy Brief). The original 6-hour audio track has been adjusted to 3 hours to reflect the more current statistic.